


Grace Notes

by Paper_Crane_Song



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Daddy Issues, Episode Tag, Episode: s04e15 Hunters, Episode: s05e09 Thirty Days, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper_Crane_Song/pseuds/Paper_Crane_Song
Summary: Set after season 4’sHunters. Tom finds his father’s letter, and in the episodeThirty Dayshe answers it.
Relationships: Harry Kim & Tom Paris, Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 13
Kudos: 23





	Grace Notes

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always agreed with the general consensus that B’Elanna was able to download the letter and that the letter was Bad so she pretended she hadn’t. After watching the episode again recently, I thought I’d contribute my take on it. The “Nothing is lost” line is from the 16th century poem _The Faerie Queene_ by Edmund Spenser. 
> 
> I’ve loved writing a Voyager story again after so many years away from the fandom, and I hope you enjoy reading it. Any thoughts or feedback are always welcome.

_Tom: “Here I am going on about something that doesn't even matter anymore.”_

_B’Elanna: “No, I'm sorry. It obviously does. You care what he thinks about you.”_

_\- Hunters_

* * *

“I wasn't able to download yours in time... You could assume that he said he loves you, and that he's proud of you.”

He knows she’s lying, just as she knew earlier that he was lying with that crack about prison and being due back on the bridge. She knows how much getting a letter from his father means to him. 

She’s downloaded it all right, and whatever’s written in it must contain the opposite of fatherly affection and pride. 

So he knows she’s lying, but he also knows that she really needs him to believe what she’s saying, that she is sad and grieving and that him accepting her version of the letter will bring her comfort, and so he looks her square in the eye and says, “I think I will.”

But later on he goes searching for it, because _there_ _is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought,_ and he remembers somebody saying that over him one time when he was sobbing in the gutter round the back of Sandrine’s, and he had no clue what it meant then but it’s always stayed with him; not so much the words themselves but the hope with which they were said, but he’ll be damned if he isn’t going to take them literally now. 

She didn’t purge the databanks completely, and after a while he finds it, a faint data trace, and the trace takes on form and the form becomes words and the words assemble themselves into a letter. 

He reads it, and then he makes himself read it again, and he tells himself it doesn’t mean anything even as the words are sinking down deep into his core. 

The worst thing is that B’Elanna has read it. The essence of the letter is true, or at least it used to be, and now B’Elanna will always have this ghost walking alongside her, and she’ll be wondering if it’s the present version of him that’s the lie, or if it’s the ghost who’s real, and maybe she’ll be right.

* * *

To distract himself he goes to hang out with Harry. Harry is shining in a way he hasn’t done for days, and he feels bad he wasn’t more supportive before, is genuinely happy that Harry finally got the letter he deserved. And he knows it will cost him but he says, “Read it to me?” 

Harry looks surprised, and then he beams. “Sure!” 

It takes a while, what with all the little interludes and explanations on Harry’s part, and as he listens he marvels at this miracle of Harry and his parents, the unconditional delight they take in each other. It is the same calibre of miracle as having the woman you’ve loved for so long tell you she loves you too. He’s already been the recipient of this second miracle, and so he cannot begrudge Harry the first. 

“I’m sorry yours didn’t make it through,” Harry says. 

He hesitates. A part of him longs to tell Harry the truth, but another part of him, the part that is small and needy, doesn’t want Harry to look at him any differently. He knows Harry has a hero-worship thing going, and he wants to stay Harry’s hero for as long as he can, even though he’s aware his hero stock has been dwindling for quite some time, probably since that Akritirian prison, when all his promises and reassurances came up empty. 

And so he shrugs and says, “No big deal,” and for a long time after, he convinces himself that it isn’t. 

* * *

Much later, when he’s in the brig, he finds himself thinking about the letter again. The words are imprinted on his mind, and they replay themselves over and over. 

He knows that after hearing of this incident, his father will believe he has been proved right, and the unfairness of it goads him into recording an explanation. 

_“First of all, bad news. I'm in jail again. Wait, keep listening, don't turn this off. I want you to know how I ended up in here, because it's not what you think.”_

During these long, endless days, he thinks about his dad and he thinks about B’Elanna, and then he starts wondering if maybe she’s having second thoughts. She’d told him she was proud of him, but now he’s not so sure, because she’s read his father’s letter too, and maybe she’s beginning to see some truth in it. After all, his little stunt with Riga hadn’t actually achieved anything; it had ended in failure, just as the letter predicted. 

So when his thirty days are up, his first words to her are a prison joke, and this time B’Elanna doesn’t even call him on it, just orders him to dinner, and he feels a quiet sense of relief. 

And then he finishes his letter to his father, which, somewhere along the way, has become a reply to his father’s letter to him. 

_“I honestly don't know if I'll ever understand you, or what went wrong between us. But I hope this letter helps you understand me a little better.”_

B’Elanna was right. He does care what his father thinks about him.

But maybe he doesn’t need to be defined by it.

_“Computer, file letter in my personal database, and transmit when we're within range of Earth.”_

_Finis_


End file.
